Victory to the Syrian People’s Uprising! US/NATO, Hands Off!

Below is a speech delivered on August 20th by Socialist Action Political Committee member Andrew Pollack to a rally of 300 in New York City in defense of the Syrian uprising against Bashar al-Assad:

Sisters and Brothers,

It is an honor to speak today, and if I stumble over my words it is out of awe and humility for the heroic steadfastness and courage of the brave Syrian people, and especially the martyrs who have so far fallen.

The right of the Syrian people to win their freedom and equality would be reason enough to support their cause.

But we have special reasons to give our support.

First, because a free Syria means a free Palestine.

How can Assad, who claims to be a supporter of “resistance,” of the Palestinian fight against Zionism, butcher Palestinian civilians in the refugee camps of Latakia at the very moment Zionist guns are murdering Palestinians in Gaza? No wonder a common chant among Syrian protesters calls Assad a coward, and asks why his guns are trained on Syrians and Palestinians while Israel occupies the Golan Heights with no challenge from Assad.

No, the Palestinian people need no such fake supporters.

Nor do the Syrian people need such fake supporters as President Obama, who pretends to support the Syrian people while massacring Arabs in Libya, in Iraq, while carrying out murder in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, while arming and financing the Zionist death machine.

No, the real support for the Syrian people in the US will come not from the White House, but from the working people of this country.

When the workers of Wisconsin took over their state capitol, a common sign was “Walk Like an Egyptian.” Recently we’ve seen another historic strike, that of the Verizon workers, and I guarantee you that if it had gone on just a little longer, those heroic workers would have looked at the courage of the Syrian masses and begun carrying signs reading “One Day Longer than our Bosses, Like in Syria!”

The only ones who will carry the fight for justice and equality through to the end — in Syria, in Palestine, in the US — are the working people of those countries. We need no fake supporters, who commit their crimes under cover of flowery words, to liberate us.